Jlouvier
Joshua Louvier (username: jlouvier) is a Thomas Wooden Railway member, collector and one of the oldest users in actual age. Josh's roots begin back in the early days, having joined YouTube on September 7th, 2006 (prior to Google acquiring YouTube in October,) and eventually the Thomas Wooden Railway Community in 2012. Early Years Josh got his start on YouTube by catering to the video game community. He uploaded videos of his extremely rare video game collection (primarily games for the Nintendo Entertainment System) that included many never seen or released prototype NES game cartridges. One of these rare prototypes sparked a huge interest in the gaming community. In 2010, Josh showed a recent swap meet (also known as flea market) pickup that he had found, which included a prototype entitled "Tommy T's Play Me Sound Editor." At the time, this game was unknown and unreleased. It didn't take time for the community to gather interest in this prototype cartridge and discover that it used to belong to the famous video game music composer "Tommy Tallarico". Within days of uploading the video on YouTube, Josh was contacted by Tommy Tallarico, who was absolutely shocked at the discovery of this prototype cartridge and made this comment to the gaming community: From Tommy: "Holy sh*t! Yeah... those are my carts. And the "Tommy T." label is my handwriting. The "Golf Power" was an old cartridge casing that I erased over... I was a game tester for Golf Power so when the game was completed I used the cart to put an NES sound engine on it for when I was working on Color A Dinosaur! It's actually a pretty historical cartridge because Color A Dinosaur is always heralded as the worst game I ever worked on... which drives the price of the actual NES cart up because so many people try to find it. I've signed a ton of those things. The complete NES Color A Dinosaur story can be found here: http://www.tallarico.com/index.php?s=coloradinosaur " Josh ended up selling this rare prototype NES cartridge to a well-respected video game collector who agreed on terms to release a free playable NES ROM for everyone to enjoy. A Thomas Transformation (the later years) Josh went on hiatus after January 20th, 2010. On April 16th, 2012, Josh uploaded a video of a factory error Donald. Several members took interest in this video, promtiingJosh to upload more. Josh followed with a review of a NIB 1992 factory error James. By September 7th, 2012 (his 4th year anniversary), Josh had uploaded almost 50 videos. He has created a number of series, including "60 Second Reviews," "Track Chat," and "Character Friday's." He is one of the most popular and most respected users in the TWR Community because of his friendliness towards other users and his well-made, accurate and educational reviews. Giveaways Josh's friendly attitude is also backed up from his giveaways. Josh has made three giveaways thus far. The first giveaway was a choice of a 1992 Thomas Wooden Railway item. The winners were chosen by having a contestant write why they believed they should win the item. Josh later picked the five best responses, wrote the names on a strip of paper and put the strips in a jar. He then shuffled them and pulled out the winner. The winner of the first giveaway was bertramfan1 and he chose a 1992 Edward as his prize. Since the giveaway was so popular, Josh decided to do another giveaway. The prize was a 1992 BoCo. Josh took the names of all the users who entered comments and did the "jar shuffle technique" The winner was TheBluebellEngine. The third giveaway was Josh's last giveaway on his channel so far. The prize was a 1992 Henrietta and Josh had the contestants pick a number from 1 - 500 and later used random.org to pick a random number from a set of numbers. The winning number was 372, however, no one guessed 372. EpicallyRandom guessed the closest to 372 and won the giveaway. Josh stated that there would be another giveaway but none has occurred yet. Josh did take place in The Thomas Wooden Railway Competition and gave out the 1st place prize - A 1996 New in the box German Cargo Ship. Josh's collection Josh is known to have amassed one of the biggest Thomas Wooden Railway collections among active community members. He has showcased a plethora of extremely rare new in box 1992 WR items. Unfortunately, in August of 2012, Josh was forced to sell a big portion of his rare 1992 collection to support his families need for a new vehicle. Josh posted on his Twitter account on the 19th, "Had to get a new car today...Unfortunately, I have to sell some of my collection :( family is important." Josh still owns to this day one of the rarest Thomas Wooden Railway sets in existence and calls it his "Holy Grail" - The 1992 22-Piece Starter Set. Popularity Jump Josh began making deals with a Mattel Dealer about getting some of the new 2013 Thomas Wooden Railway Products extremely early, before most hit the store shelves. He then uploaded reviews on these new 2013 items and saw a huge increase in subscribers and video views. This success paid off in an increase of subscribers. Josh uploaded a review of the 2013 yearbook, which went viral gaining over 200,000 views and increasing his subscriber count to over 1,000. Josh continues to do more reviews of the new 2013 items that are still being released today, as well as his Character Fridays series. His popularity continues to grow today. Series Character Friday: '''In this weekly series, Josh spotlights a TWR character or characters and usually talks about the history and personality of the character. The first episode on Caroline The Car was uploaded on December 7, 2012. The finale episode on the White Face Troublesome Truck was uploaded on August 7, 2015, but the series reboot, an episode on Skiff the Railboat, was uploaded on January 1, 2016. Josh still uploads new Character Fridays to spotlight the new characters that come out in the Thomas Wood line each year. '''Track Chat: '''Josh originally uploaded the first "Track Chat" on November 9th, 2012. The series, (the second Josh created) has since gone on to include a total of 8 videos and over 3.4 Million views! "Track Chat" is basically what it implies. During the video, a piece of wooden railway track is reviewed and discussed. '''60 Second Reviews: This series was the first of many for Josh's channel. Josh created "60 Second Reviews" as a way to refresh his channel and allow him to upload on a more frequent basis. The series first debuted on August 15th, 2012 with a review of Sir Topham & Lady Hatt. "60 Second Reviews" is exactly as it appears to be, a review that is no longer than 60 seconds from start to finish. Oddly enough, Josh decided to do a "60 Second Review" on a Lord of The Rings Lego set which is a bit strange since this review doesn't fit in with his style of reviews. To date, "60 Second Reviews" has spanned 32 videos, & over 2.2 Million video views. World Market Treasures: In this series, Josh takes a look at Thomas and Friends products from all over the world, with most of the videos to date being primarily based on products from China and Japan. Swap Meet Treasures: '''In this video series, Josh takes his video camera along to a Swap Meet ( a.k.a. flea market ) and chronicles all the interesting TWR items that he buys, as well as giving tips on how to get good bargains on TWR trains. So far, the series has had one episode. Josh recently released a promo to the long-awaited second episode, which will be coming out soon. '''Thomas the Tank Engine - Brio Edition: The first episode of this new series, which was Brio Percy, was uploaded on June 30th, 2014. This series will look at the differences between Brio engines made in Sweden, and Thomas Wooden Railway engines made in China. '''Remembering The Classics: '''This is the 6th unique series on Josh's channel. Within this series, Josh reviews a classic Thomas Wooden Railway item. "Why should we forget the true foundations that Learning Curve originally built with the Wooden Railway? It's important to take a look at what was, and not forget the true glory days of the TWR." The Wooden Railway Collector App The Wooden Railway Collector is an App for Android & iOS created by Jlouvier, MrMPS2002 and LNERFlyingScotsman. It has been over a year since this project has been worked on and in a video recently released by Josh, he stated that the app "never caught enough attention" and work stopped altogether. Also, in this same video, he shows a clip of a TWR user making a tour of the app to show what it would have been like, had the idea been successful. Josh today Josh currently has over 54,000 subscribers and 75,000,000 video views on YouTube. He also uses the Wooden Railway Forums to connect with other users and share insight into his collection. Josh also uses Twitter as well as having a fan base on Facebook, and continues to faithfully release videos for his fans. From May 2017 to July 2018, Josh was on hiatus and was not active on any social media, including YouTube. In August of 2018, Josh returned to the community with a review of the 100 Piece Set. In this review, Josh met up with MrMPS and LNERFlyingScotsman, along with finally revealing his face. Character Friday resumed, along with reviews of the 2019 Thomas Wood range. Category:2012 Category:Jlouvier Category:Active Members